Modi in UK: Will we ever be decolonised?

By Dr. Kallol Guha

Prime Minister Modi's reception at London had the pomp and glamour of a five-star quality. However, it is interesting to speculate what went on inside the mind of the host who leads a 6.4 crore British population internationally far more influential and powerful, and for all practical purposes, remotely controls their former colonies– including 125 crore Indians— who are plagued with poverty, ill health, fourth rate imitation schooling and underdevelopment.

The host, when receiving Modi, must have been very well aware that their guest, in fact, represents 7-8 crore Anglophonic Indians, who are a miserable and pathetic caricature of the British life style, and are ruling over the rest 117-118 crore, while protecting the interest of the Anglo-American axis power in India.

This situation is favorably comparable to the early days of British Raj, when Aristocrats and Babus – under the direct supervision of one lakh white-skinned British population –were the keepers of British interest in the 35 crore-strong India.

The British host probably knows better than Modi that it is the marketing machinery of the Anglo-American corporate press that is preaching about the "Largest Democracy", "Freedom of Press", and the "growth rate" of India which means nothing to the majority non-Anglophonic Indians living below poverty line.

The British also must also know better than their Indian counterparts that the fourth-rate Indian schooling – a caricature of the Anglo-American system – has not made any new contribution in any field during the last 65 years and is not likely to pose any competition to the major countries in the field of intellectual performance.

The British could not possibly overlook the fact that it is their manipulation of the Indian education system (Macaulay's Doctrine) which has made it possible for them to remote control all of India's resources through the control of its human resource. So successful was this process that Indians seem to have lost all sense of self-respect and pride in identity, and in a way is now suffering from an identity crisis.

It is qualitatively the same Indian population who were ruled by one lakh British population for over two hundred years, who are now ruling four times that population through their agents represented by Modi.

At the time when I was teaching at the University of Constantine in Algeria, 99 percent of the university teaching staff was French as the medium of instruction there was French language. The student population of the University – by virtue of the cultural conditioning of the French colonial masters – showed distinct preference towards imitating their colonial masters in their language, dress, lifestyle, beliefs, and concepts, and look down upon everything that was indigenous. This is similar to the current state in India.

When the French instructors realized I was Indian, they would many a time speak their mind in my presence. They commented: "Look at these clowns. They believe they would be accepted as French equivalent by imitating us. France and the world will never accept them as one of us. They have no sense of self-respect and do not realize that their only identity is Algerian. But these fools do not understand that."

These comments of the French about the Algerians kicked me back to self-realization as I apprehended that the British must be thinking and saying similar things about the Anglophonic Indians, of which, I was one. As such, the British hosts must be thinking the same of Modi.

Let there be no miscalculation: the Anglo-American marketing forces will continue to blow horns inside and outside India about India's "largest Democracy", "Freedom of Press" and "growth rate", as a tool to ensure remote control over India's resources, while leaders such as Modi –like many others in the past– will continue to represent India in London, pretending they are equals!